Portrait of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor (1459-1519) (Pompa Introitus Ferdinandi), 1634-1635

Portrait of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor (1459–1519) (Pompa Introitus Ferdinandi), 1634–1635, held at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, is among the most historically distant subjects in the Pompa Introitus cycle — a posthumous portrait of an emperor who had died more than a century before the painting was made. Maximilian I was the great-grandfather of Philip II of Spain, the Habsburgs' great dynastic architect who used marriage and inheritance to assemble the dynasty's extraordinary European empire. Commemorating Maximilian in a cycle celebrating Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand's entry into Antwerp in 1635 was a deep act of dynastic memory, reaching back to the roots of Habsburg power to assert the long legitimacy of their governance in the Netherlands. De Vos would have based this image on established portrait traditions — Dürer's famous Maximilian portrait provided the dominant iconographic type. The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna's collection of these Pompa Introitus portraits preserves a unique group of dynastic commemorations from this ceremony.

Synthesizing from Dürer and other established Maximilian iconography, de Vos constructs a Baroque interpretation of the late Gothic emperor. The tonal language shifts slightly from contemporary portraits to accommodate the historicizing intent — warmer, more archaic in feeling than the brisk directness of his contemporary likenesses. Imperial regalia are rendered with ceremonial weight.